The many joys of a dead week

December 27, 2013

Because of the way Christmas and New Years fall this year, there’s an unusually long period of time when people are more focused on things other than the disclosures in SEC filings. Which makes it a perfect time to visit the SEC filings dump, which most people lovingly know as EDGAR.

While many people cleared their calendars from Dec. 20 to Jan. 2, the SEC is only closed two of those days. And judging by the amount of stuff we’ve seen crossing our radar this past week, we can only imagine what tonight’s Friday Night Dump will look like. While some of the biggest disclosures have already been reported, when you look at them all together, it’s hard to just chalk the timing up to mere coincidence, or a rush to complete things before the end of the year. Here’s a brief run-down of some of the biggest ones:

Occidental Petroleum disclosed on Monday that it had reached a settlement with former CEO Ray Irani. Irani will get $26 million in severance plus another $1.3 million to cover various expenses for the rest of his life.

Also on Monday, Freeport McMoran Copper & Gold agreed to give its CEO, Richard Adkerson, about $36 million worth of stock in exchange for him giving up his rights to severance pay.

On Thursday, Harbinger Group Inc. disclosed that Chairman and CEO Philip Falcone — the same person who was banned from trading by the SEC earlier this year — would be eligible for up to $20.8 million in bonus payments.

While those are the biggest of the big, we also saw interesting disclosures from Barnes & Noble, Cisco, Goodyear Tire & Rubber, and Sotheby’s, to name a few.

One filing we’ve yet to see, but which we continue to look for, is from Target. It’s hard to imagine that the massive security breech that was first disclosed at the height of the Christmas shopping season wouldn’t warrant an 8-K, especially since the DOJ is now investigating. But other than some Form 4s, Target’s last filing was this 10-Q on Nov. 27. Perhaps that’s being saved for later today!